Buying a 360

corblimey

With my SSIA maturing, I'm thinking of splashing out a 360, but I need to know what kit I should buy. Am I right in thinking that the 'core' pack is useless, and I need a lot more to get the best out of the box. Do I really need a hd?

What about XBox Live or whatever it's called these days - I have a router upstairs and the 360 will be downstairs, what sort of lead do I need?

GrumPy

Any standard ethernet network cable will do for connecting it to xbox live. And yes, you do need a hdd, get the premium pack. Core is retarded.

Triton

Xtravision have a great HD for €999. The 360 looks a treat on it. I'd buy a premium pack for €400 and buy your games here on Boards on the FS Consoles Forum. There are always loads of 360 games here for sale far cheaper than the rip-off prices in the shops.

corblimey

Triton wrote:

Xtravision have a great HD for €999. The 360 looks a treat on it. I'd buy a premium pack for €400 and buy your games here on Boards on the FS Consoles Forum. There are always loads of 360 games here for sale far cheaper than the rip-off prices in the shops.

Sorry triton, when I said 'hd' above, I mean a hard drive, not a tv

Thanks for the tip on the games though.

Dermington

I bought one last week in Gamestop as a spur of the moment thing. I spent €499.98 on it.

The core package, in my opinion, is just delaying the innevitable by not providing you with the hard drive etc.

I bought the premium system for €469.99 which came with with one wireless controller, hard drive, oblivion and spent an extra €29.99 for the vga cable (I use the Dell 20" widescreen monitor to play it on).

The kit that I bought came with everything I needed to connect it up (both audio and video). It also comes with a high quality network cable for connecting it to your router, pc or whatever. It comes with some form of xbox live subscription but it didn't look like the top package so i just subscribed for a month for €6.99 to see what the fuss was all about and I must admit I'm impressed. I'm playing PGR3 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and its all very fun.

the 360 is definitely worth buying but I would ensure you go for the more expensive version because It does come with a lot for your money and the hard drive can be used to store music, photo's, video, downloaded game content (from Xbox Live), game demo's (from Xbox Live) and all sorts of stuff like that.

robinph

Dermington wrote:

It comes with some form of xbox live subscription but it didn't look like the top package so i just subscribed for a month for €6.99 to see what the fuss was all about and I must admit I'm impressed.

It's not very clear when you go through the sign up but if you just create a Silver account to start off with and don't pay at all then they will give you a Gold account free for the first month which you can then pay the monthly, 3 monthly or yearly subscription on top of that afterwards. But you've not been caught out too badly as the Gold subscription is well worth the money.

Ri_Nollaig

corblimey wrote:

Sorry triton, when I said 'hd' above, I mean a hard drive, not a tv

Thanks for the tip on the games though.

generaly hard drives are HDD and hi-def TV's are HD just to provent confusion.
if you have a wifi router you could buy a wifi dougle (dont buy the rip off ms one) and just use that instead of an ethernet cable that you could trip over

ondafly

i bought a 360 last friday in Game (blanch) , for €479. Premium package which included Hitman and Project Gotham. Strolled over to Harvey Normans and got Ghost Recon for €57. Pretty good prices surprisingly enough !

fifth

At work (xtravision) we just started a great offer on xbox 360.

Xbox 360 PREMIUM + Fifa world cup 2006, + Project gotham racing + Adidas football + World Cup faceplate for €459.99

or similar offer on the CORE for €369.99

NOWS THE TIME!!! (considering mine was 500euro when I got it, but worth it!)

Lemlin

funkyflea wrote:

At work (xtravision) we just started a great offer on xbox 360.

Xbox 360 PREMIUM + Fifa world cup 2006, + Project gotham racing + Adidas football + World Cup faceplate for €459.99

or similar offer on the CORE for €369.99

NOWS THE TIME!!! (considering mine was 500euro when I got it, but worth it!)

That is a good offer seeing as some places are selling the premium for €409.99 on its own. The one part of it I wouldn't like is FIFA but I suppose you can't have everything. Maybe you could try and haggle with them to change it, possibly by suggesting you'd take a cheaper game.

WellyJ

Dermington wrote:

spent an extra €29.99 for the vga cable (I use the Dell 20" widescreen monitor to play it on).

Doesnt the 20" have component inputs?

The 24" does, thats what i use, no need to buy extra cables

corblimey

funkyflea wrote:

At work (xtravision) we just started a great offer on xbox 360.

Xbox 360 PREMIUM + Fifa world cup 2006, + Project gotham racing + Adidas football + World Cup faceplate for €459.99

or similar offer on the CORE for €369.99

NOWS THE TIME!!! (considering mine was 500euro when I got it, but worth it!)

I actually end up getting it in Xtravision without seeing this notice. The practically 2 free games (although imho they're both pretty poor) sold it for me. Picked up GRAW and Table Tennis too. Maaaan.

GrumPy

PGR3 is very good Fifa isn't great though, still better than alot of other 360 games mind you.

fifth

corblimey wrote:

I actually end up getting it in Xtravision without seeing this notice. The practically 2 free games (although imho they're both pretty poor) sold it for me. Picked up GRAW and Table Tennis too. Maaaan.

Congrats!

Kinetic^

Yeah PGR3 is brilliant, you should try pick up GRAW and COD2. Then something like table tennis/top spin for something different.

corblimey

Keyser Soze 5 wrote:

Yeah PGR3 is brilliant, you should try pick up GRAW and COD2. Then something like table tennis/top spin for something different.

Got GRAW and TT. I have COD2 on the PC, I would assume it's pretty much the same?

jonnybadd

The exact same Single player. Multiplayer the new maps they released (3 for free, 3 cost MS points) are different from the two maps released on the PC.

corblimey

oh, i have a question. is everybody else's xbox really really loud? i have it next to my tv, and it drowns out a lot of the music & speech when i have it at normal volume.

Kinetic^

corblimey wrote:

oh, i have a question. is everybody else's xbox really really loud? i have it next to my tv, and it drowns out a lot of the music & speech when i have it at normal volume.

Yeah it can be noisy, but I tend to have the TV + other speakers hooked up so I never really notice it tbh.

Dermington

WellyJ wrote:

Doesnt the 20" have component inputs?

The 24" does, thats what i use, no need to buy extra cables

Not that im aware of. The 20" has dvi, vga, s-video and composite.